The Jesuit order for decades used Gonzaga University’s campus to house priests who had been removed from active service in the priesthood due to accusations of sexual abuse, according to an report recently published by the Center for Investigative Reporting and republished by the Associated Press.

According to the report, the Jesuit order’s Oregon Province sent to the university at least 20 Jesuit priests who had been accused of sexual misconduct, in most cases while they were functioning in the order’s missions in isolated Alaska villages populated by indigenous people as well as Indian reservations in the northwestern US.

The priests were kept on the campus in a building that is called the “Cardinal Bea House,” which is situated on the Gonzaga campus but belongs to the Jesuit order itself, rather than to the university.

According to the report, one of the most infamous abusers who eventually came to live on campus had a powerful supporter — a current vice president of Gonzaga, Father Frank Case, who at the time was the head of the Jesuits’ Oregon Province. In 1989, Case wrote a glowing letter of recommendation for the abuser priest’s appointment to a hospital chaplaincy position, claiming that the priest was in “very good standing” with the order, despite the fact that the priest had already been removed from his assignment in Alaska because of complaints of sexual abuse.